Jane Sharp suddenly loses her Father and finds herself feeling quite lost. She's a college student with not many friends. Looking for a distraction from her grief, she finds herself getting involved in an online true crime Reddit type group. She really starts going down the rabbit hole and once there is the shocking deaths of three college girls in Idaho, she starts to let it consume her life. She becomes very close with the other members of the group and together they start to piece together details of the crimes and eventually start working with the FBI to solve the case. Things then start to not quite add up and from here there are several twists and turns. It was a bit slow at times and maybe a little too long, but overall a good, fast paced thriller. I did find the similarities to the most recent Idaho murders a bit cringy, especially since that is ongoing. But I do love her writing and did enjoy it overall and will continue to read whatever she writes.

Thank you to @netgalley and @sourcebookslandmark for this #gifted copy. Publishes on March 25, 2025.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was different that I expected. I liked it, but I feel like there was something off about how similiar the case is the the Idaho murders. It was a bit off putting since it is such a horrifying and dark case that is still active and going to trial. I know the author's note at the beginning states there is inspiration from as a true crime case (likely the Moscow one) but I feel like it is still so recent that I would hate if the families saw or heard of the similarities.

However, I loved the internet sleuthing aspect. I'm a bit of a crime junkie and it was so fascinating to see how these "normal people" can solve crimes and do some good. The main character finds herself on a crime hunting site for amateur sleuths (gave me Don't Fu*k With Cats off Netflix vibes) where becomes addicted to it. She finds herself as a part of the community and I loved how close they got and became a "found family" in a sense.

But overall, I did like the book but I couldn't shake the part that made me uncomfortable as I read it.

Oh my goodness this book had me screaming and on the edge of my seat. Another fantastic Ashley Winstead thriller.
Jane wants to set the record straight about her crime sleuthing after one of the biggest police investigations blows up in their faces.
Jane has just lost her dad and through her grief she inadvertantly gets mixed up in internet sleuthing. It is all she can focus on, if she can find out what happened to these people then she can maybe come to terms with what happened to her father.
Jane meets a group of four others that take her in and treat her like one of their own. They are popular on the network and well known in the community. When a second set of women are targeted, the group decides they need to go to Idaho and investigate themselves, in person.
The first part of the book I was not sure of. It was really close to the show on the Idaho four that I had just watched and I could see a lot of the same elements. Then the book just kept taking turn after turn. There were a lot of subtle hints in here of what was to come but I only picked up on a few, and then was screaming when I realized what I had missed all along.
The first time Jane was called Veronica from Heathers, I knew this book was for me. If you like True Crime, internet sleuths, twists and turns and Heathers... you will LOVE this book. I honestly couldn't stop thinking about it after it was over.
Thank you to Sourcebooks, Netgalley and Ashley Winstead for an early copy.

Honestly… this is way too similar to an open case right now and I felt completely unsettled. This was almost a copy/paste of the tragedy that took place at the University of Idaho in 2022. I know Winstead put a warning at the beginning, but I feel like profiting off of a case that’s still so fresh like this is unethical. This isn’t going to trial until August of this year, and I feel like this isn’t shining a light on the issues of true crime… it’s just furthering the issue. This was insensitive to the families and I hope they don’t read this.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks for this ARC.

Ashley Winstead does it again. The queen of thrillers is back. This book did not disappoint, you need to pick it up!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest opinion!

This one gave me some mixed feelings. After Janes father died, she needed something to occupy her time. She finds her way on true crime feeds and becomes obsessed. She befriends a group of other amateur sleuths and start investigating active investigations in the US. After a murder of 3 college girls sweeps the nation, they want to be the ones to solve It. Then the killer turns into a serial killer. Details don’t add up and they keep finding more questions than answers.

When you read the description of the book, if you think It sounds familiar, that’s because It is. She copies the exact details of the Idaho murders that are still in trial and not concluded yet. Which 1. Just rubs me the wrong way and 2. Made It pretty boring in the middle since you know what’s going to happen. If she was going to copy the case, i wish she made It more satirical potentially and explored the dangers of internet sleuths or explored some other politically important topic. But Im not quite sure the purpose of this novel and that’s what bothers me.

This Book Will Bury Me - Ashley Winstead

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“No body, no crime, as the great Taylor Swift would say.”

Jane is grieving the loss of her father when she falls feet first into the online world of true crime message boards and amateur sleuthing. After being accepted into the inner circle of a crime obsessed group, she works with her newfound family to solve the mysterious murders happening on a college campus in Idaho.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC of this! I absolutely loved the way this rag tag group of true crime junkies came together and how they worked together to try to solve the murders. However, aspects of the story seemed extremely far fetched. For example, for everyone to drop their entire lives to go to the town of the murders and then somehow become FBI informants?! I had an inkling about who the killer was and I was pleasantly surprised I was correct. A solid true crime murder mystery!

as a devoted mystery reader with the gift of context and dramatic irony on her side, i found this whodunnit fairly easy to figure out. it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that i was annoyed at the characters for taking their time puzzling it out – i thought it struck a nice balance and enjoyed watching the pieces fall into place, even if it did take a while.

i love a found family so i really liked most of the characters (at this point, can any group of people in a fictional work function without at least one hacker extraordinaire??). the larger problem was that the book felt unnecessarily long. i enjoyed reading it while i was actually reading it, but once i put the book down it was kind of hard for me to feel motivated enough to pick it back up.

i’m not well versed in the world of true crime (i like my felonies fictional, thank you), but i’ve heard that one of the major events in this book is a ripped-from-the-headlines version of one that actually happened. i usually think it’s pretty gross and lazy to use real crimes, but i didn’t clock it while i was reading since i wasn't familiar. what i did get was that amateurs and cops both have plenty of problems (often each other). the amateur sleuths were quick to judgment and hurt innocents. the police were more concerned with their prejudices and perception than getting justice. i didn’t really believe the relationship between the group and law enforcement, just like i didn’t believe some of the final resolutions, but honestly i was way too busy losing it over the star trek AND buffy the vampire slayer self-insert fan fiction to care. the AO3 mention alone was enough to get four stars out of me!

thanks to tantor audio for the audio copy and sourcebooks landmark for the digital copy on netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

@ashleywinsteadbooks’ newest thriller is quite the ride. It explores grief, building your own family, true crime, social media, and web sleuths. It takes facts from well know murders and creates a wholly original story. It’s a complicated story and really makes you critically think about all the many layers and twists. I loved it and will probably be thinking about this book for a long time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of the latest from Ashley Winfield, This Book Will Bury Me.

This was my favorite Ashley Winfield yet. The book is written from the POV a 24-year old who has helped solve a serial murder, one year later. She (and her found family of redditers) hit a lot of ups and downs while solving the case, and the ride really ends up being pretty twisty. It took me a little while to figure out who the killer was. This one was definitely more of a slow burn, but I really liked it. Pub date is 3/25, check it out!

“After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar….So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them.”

“This Book Will Bury Me” follows Jane & 4 of her new internet friends. The goal is to solve murders of 6 college girls before anyone else is killed…

This book was good and kept me interested. This wasn’t some kind of crazy thriller but more of True Crime type of book. ( Fyi this book has some parts of a real murder case). 4 stars as i figured out who the killer was earlier on and the book felt a bit long.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley, author Ashley Winstead, and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

Winstead is a local author to me, so I was excited to finally check out her work (this was my first read of hers), and unfortunately, this book was not for me. I will start with the good, which is that I really enjoyed the online elements. The phenomenon of the “armchair sleuth” has gotten even more prominent in recent years, and I think this book does a good job of showing the good and bad sides of people turning into detectives at home. I loved the inclusion of chat board discussions, and seeing the cases unravel through anonymous posts and users was a little unsettling just because it felt so realistic. I thought the characters were well-developed, and I appreciated their distinct personalities. However, this is about where my personal enjoyment stopped. I think the book as a whole was way too long and could have been edited down by a third. There was lots of repetition, and I got really tired of the constant foreshadowing and “more on that later” at the end of every single chapter in the first half. Another let down for me is that all of the foreshadowing led me to guessing the big twist about halfway in. If this was streamlined, I think it would have helped to improve the pacing and had the reveal be more shocking. I also thought the book was a little gruesome for my taste, and I don’t personally love how similar it is to the real life University of Idaho case since this is a fictional book. But do with that what you will because different people will have different opinions. The side plot of Jane dealing with her dad’s death didn’t seem to add much to the story other than her motivation for becoming Searcher, and it was a bit jarring at times to be taken out of the primary story to then add on to that plot line. Same with the “book within a book” format; I didn’t feel that was fully carried out and didn’t serve the story as a whole. Overall, I think there is an audience out there for this book, but that audience wasn’t me. I will still check out some of Winstead’s prior works, but now with a little bit more of an open mind.

(Actual: 4.25⭐) Love Ashley Winstead and this was another thriller win in the books!!! While I'm not the biggest true crime enthusiast (like, at all, really lol), I thoroughly enjoyed the lens in which this novel is filtered through, and found it to be very, very engaging in the end. The twists and turns seemed endless, with each more surprising than the last, and kept me on my toes the entire way through. A big part of my love for this novel stems from my love of Winstead's prose, and I'm further aware that the style in which TBWBM is a bit of a departure from her usual signature. That said, I absolutely believe that that choice and willingness to shake things up was well worth it and made this book stand out even more for me! Definitely recommend to thriller fans and newbies alike!!!

When Jane’s father dies unexpectedly, she escapes her grief by falling into the world of armchair detectives. Before long she’s so engrained within this community that she considers the small group of friends she’s made to be almost her family. When a mass killing occurs on a small campus in Idaho, Jane and her team, head to Idaho to investigate where the FBI and local police can’t. As their investigation continues, Jane and her team find themselves at the center of the case and might not survive past it.

I’m conflicted with this book. It’s very clearly based on the Idaho four, which I know other reviews have noted. However, there is an author note where Winstead addresses this and states her reasoning for basing the story on true events. So, I’ll give her that. Her intentions seem ‘good’ but it’s still hard to separate the true events from such a recent murder from the actual storyline. At the end of the day, tons of fiction is based on true events and so I don’t know if we can ‘cancel’ this book because of it. Just a fair warning as you head into this book, that there are lots of very true details.

The story itself, is ‘meh’. I hate saying that since it’s based on true events, but the first half of the story is just following Jane and her grief around and has such a slow start. Learning about message boards was interesting and honestly incredibly frustrating. Which is kind of the point Winstead is trying to make. How small facts can blow up and suddenly mob mentally takes over. Another book I read recently I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, also dived deep into the way social media can complicate facts, which in the end can hinder police investigations. It’s interesting that we’re starting to see this be a bigger theme in stories.

Jane as a character though, I never connected with. She’s a hard to like character and just felt off. Same with most of our other main characters. Even after the story started moving, I never felt truly invested in the story, primarily because of Jane. There are a few areas of suspense but the ending again was ‘meh’ and felt completely unrealistic and a bit lazy.

This is my first Ashley Winstead book and while I didn’t hate it, it was just okay. It’s entirely too long. Has some forced romance side plot which I didn’t love, and I’m not sure everyone will appreciate how closely it follows other murders.


This Book Will Bury Me comes out March 25, 2025. Huge thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review, please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my:
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I absolutely loved this book! The short chapters and narration style really worked for me, and I found the peek into the true crime forums to be fascinating. I was immediately hooked by the primary murder plot line and loved the twist + ending. My one minor complaint is I feel like there was maybe a bit too much of the dad storyline, but not enough to decrease my enjoyment overall and I do think it added important backstory about how our main character got so involved. This is one of the best and most entertaining thrillers I've read in a long time - highly recommend!

Another fast paced, hard to put down book from Winstead! She has very easily turned into a must read author for me. I love how twisty her thrillers are along with having interesting, unique character development!

Another excellent book by Ashley Winstead. As usual, her characters are engaging and extraordinarily complex, and these complexities leave you with a twist that you do not see coming. You could really tell the parallels with her grief and the grief she was writing about, as well as the inner struggles she was having. Excellent read.

Having read and loved other book by Ashley Winstead, I went into this one expecting it to be good. While I did end up liking the story, there’s a part of me that feels conflicted about the inspiration for the book.

Let’s start with the good stuff. I’m not a big true-crime person, but this plot felt very easy to get into in regards to the online forums and “internet sleuths”. The idea of people online helping to solve murders is intriguing, but I also liked how Winstead made a point to show how complicated this can be (i.e. obsession vs. actual desire to help, getting in the way of police procedures). There’s definitely a fine line between helpful and hurtful, and how that line often blurs was an interesting point.

The characters in this book weren’t necessarily lovable (with maybe the exception of Mistress), but their moral grayness made me want to know more. The way the mystery unfolded felt a little slow at times (this book is almost 500 pages), but definitely picked up a lot at the end. I kinda saw the twist coming, but how it was done still felt surprising, especially seeing it from the different characters’ POVs. The way everything tied together in the end was satisfying, but I maybe wanted a little more there.

Now for the messier part. This book is largely inspired by the Idaho College Murders in 2022; like heavily references a lot of things that were similar to or the same as the real life tragedy. Are forms of entertainment inspired by other tragedies? Yes, often. With a case that is still ongoing, I think it’s a little different here maybe? I’m still not quite sure how to feel about it other than torn. I read an advance copy that didn’t include the “Conversation with the Author” at the end, and would be interested in reading that in a finished copy, as I’m sure it probably addresses this and I’m curious to hear her thoughts.

Overall I did like this book and the mystery plot of it, it was just the real-life inspiration made me feel a little weird about it.

Thank you Sourcebooks for the advance copy.

Great book! If you’re a lover of true crime & police procedure then you’ll love this book! I really enjoyed the insight into the life of the “internet” sleuths.
This book is very loosely based on the Idaho murders that took place in 2022…so that added another level of intrigue.
I was immediately hooked & could not wait to see what the final twist would be! & although I feel it was kinda obvious…it also wasn’t obvious at all! I enjoyed this book!

Ashley Winstead's Writing Continues to Astonish!

With every new release, Ashley Winstead proves just how exceptional her storytelling is, and This Book Will Bury Me is no exception. In this gripping novel, we meet Jane Sharp, a college student who is reeling from the sudden death of her father due to a heart attack. Struggling to cope, she drops out of school and becomes consumed by her fascination with true crime. Her obsession leads her to a tight-knit online community of fellow enthusiasts, who soon invite her to join their ranks.

Jane’s natural knack for investigation quickly earns her the respect of the group, and she helps crack a local murder case in her hometown. But when a tragedy strikes in Delphine, Idaho, the group decides to use their collective knowledge to assist the local authorities. Tensions rise, however, as it becomes clear that the group’s idea of "helping" doesn’t always align with the police's methods. When George, their father figure, refuses to leak vital information, he withdraws from the investigation. But when another murder shakes the Delphine campus, George is reluctantly pulled back into the fold.

The question looms: are these amateur sleuths truly aiding the investigation, or are they complicating things further? And will the murderer ultimately be caught?

Packed with unexpected twists, This Book Will Bury Me is a fast-paced and compelling read. As Jane attempts to make sense of the unfolding events and share her perspective, you’ll find yourself drawn into the mystery, eager to piece together the clues alongside her. A must-read for fans of psychological thrillers and intense crime fiction!